In email marketing, spam is in the eyes of the beholder
Even people who originally opted in to get your email marketing might label you as spam. That’s because all you have to do is misbehave (in their opinion) and you run the risk of being reported as such.
An easy way to annoy your recipients and get falsely reported is by emailing too frequently. And as MarketingSherpa (http://www.sherpastore.com) points out in their Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008, frequency is very much a matter of opinion. According to the guide, 50% of respondents said “emails that arrive too frequently” are spam…even when those emails come from a company they know! (p. 82). That’s a big chunk of your crowd thinking you’re emails are inappropriate and annoying, only because you’re sending too often. And, again, too often is according to the person on the other end, not your email marketing team.
The lesson here? Be flexible with frequency. Don’t overdue it, and make sure you’re always relevant…in the eyes of the recipient. Because spam’s not a label you want under any circumstances.
